In a new study, Researchers at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of California in San Diego (United States) have discovered that an enzyme called MICAL2 promotes growth and spread of tumors in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC), The most common form of pancreatic cancer. The study is published in ‘Cancer Research‘, a magazine of the American Association for Cancer Research.
In depth
Normally, Mical2 plays an important role in migration and cell morphologybut when the researchers measured gene expression in PDAC tumor cells, they discovered that there was an excessive amount of the enzyme compared to healthy cells: It is the first time that mical2 is experimentally related to pancreas cancer.
The researchers also observed that among patients undergoing surgery to remove their PDAC tumorsthose with low expression of Mical2 in their tumor cells survived approximately twice as much as those whose tumor cells produced more than the enzyme, which suggests that Mical2 can be involved in the progress of the disease to an advanced stage.
More details
In this way, it seems that Mical2 enhances the kras signaling routewhich regulates growth, proliferation and cell death and it is known that it is the main driver of the growth of the pancreatic tumor and the propagation of cancer to other body tissues. The silencing of the Mical2 gene in the PDAC cells drastically slowed down the Kras signaling path activity. Thus, when tumor cells are deficient in Mical2, the Kras signaling pathway cannot collect nutrients that lead to tumor growth. On the other hand, Mical2’s expression promotes the division of tumor cells, migration and healthy tissue invasion.
Thus, the findings suggest that MICAL2 could be a promising objective for pharmacological therapies against the PDAC, according to the main author, Andrew LowyProfessor and Head of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the Faculty of Medicine of the UC San Diego and Associate Clinical Director of Surgery at the UC San Diego Oncological Center.
To take into account
“Pancreas cancer has the highest mortality rate of all common cancers and, therefore, current treatments are unfortunately inappropriate,” Lowy summarizes. “We believe it will be possible We are working to identify candidate medicines to start the path to the blockade of the MICAL2 function in pancreatic cancer “.
#Researchers #discover #enzyme #promotes #growth #spread #tumors #pancreatic #cancer
